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Web search operations

Have you ever tried to do a Web search and got way too many
links (hits) to be helpful? Perhaps you tried to add another
word, in the hopes of narrowing the search down. With some
search engines, that will work. For other search engines, that
can actually give you more results, because rather than requiring
both words, the engine only needs one of them to consider a site
to be a hit. Thats the dierence between AND and OR.
Heres a paragraph that might appear on a Web page:
Welcome to my cheese fan site! I love all kinds of cheese,
from asagio to zamorano, imported from countries from
Argentina to Wales (and many domestic cheeses too)!
These pages have my thoughts and opinions on every-
thing Ive tried. Some yummy recipes, too. Enjoy!
1. Following are some possible Web searches. Decide if the
search will register this page as a hit (assuming this para-
graph is all thats on the page). Remember: AND means
both words have to be on the page; OR means at least one
of the two has to be there.
(a) cheese AND mozzarella
(b) cheese OR mozzarella
(c) cheese AND Argentina
(d) sardo AND Argentina Sardo is an Argentinean cheese.
2. Search engines compare the text on a Web page to the
words given for the search. If a word appears on the page,
the search engine considers this TRUE. If the word doesnt, If the search word appears within
a word on the pagefor example,
port appears inside
importedthis is considered
TRUE.
the engine considers this FALSE. Decide if the following
words are TRUE or FALSE for the paragraph above.
(a) cheese
(b) mozzarella
(c) Argentina
(d) sardo
3. To the search engine, AND and OR are operators, sort of
like addition and multiplication. They are called Boolean
operators, which can work with only two numbers, Boolean operators are particularly
useful with computer
programming and creating
spreadsheets.
TRUE and FALSE. Once the engine determines if a word
is TRUE or FALSE, it evaluates the whole expression. De-
termine how the following should be evaluated.
Problems with a Point: March 12, 2002 c EDC 2001
Web search operations: Problem 2
(a) TRUE AND TRUE (Ex: cheese AND Argentina)
(b) TRUE AND FALSE (Ex: cheese AND mozzarella)
(c) FALSE AND TRUE (Ex: sardo AND Argentina)
(d) FALSE AND FALSE (Ex: mozzarella AND sardo)
(e) TRUE OR TRUE (Ex: cheese OR Argentina)
(f) TRUE OR FALSE (Ex: cheese OR mozzarella)
(g) FALSE OR TRUE (Ex: sardo OR Argentina)
(h) FALSE OR FALSE (Ex: mozzarella OR sardo)
You can make more complicated expressions, too. For example,
to nd cheddar cheeses specically from Vermont or Wisconsin,
search for cheddar AND (Vermont OR Wisconsin). As with
arithmetic operations, evaluate expressions inside parentheses
rst. Then evaluate from left to right.
4. Evaluate the following expressions as TRUE or FALSE.
(a) TRUE AND (FALSE OR TRUE)
(b) FALSE OR (TRUE AND TRUE)
(c) (TRUE OR FALSE) AND (TRUE AND FALSE)
(d) (FALSE AND FALSE) OR (TRUE AND TRUE)
Both AND and OR are called binary operations because you The prex bi- means two and the
prex uni- means one.
need two objects to combine. (Addition and multiplication are
binary operations, tooyou need two numbers to add or mul-
tiply together.) Unary operations need only one objectfor ex-
ample, absolute value is a unary operation.
There is a unary Boolean operator: NOT, which simply changes
a value to the other: NOT TRUE is FALSE and NOT FALSE
is TRUE. Evaluate NOT before you evaluate AND or OR.
5. Your cheese search might give too many sites with recipes.
Would the sample Web page be a hit for the search cheese
AND NOT recipes?
6. Evaluate the following expressions:
(a) TRUE AND NOT TRUE
(b) FALSE OR NOT TRUE
(c) TRUE AND NOT FALSE
(d) FALSE OR NOT (TRUE AND NOT TRUE)
(e) NOT [TRUE AND NOT (FALSE OR NOT TRUE)]
7. Challenge: A famous result of Boolean algebra gives an This result is one of De Morgans
formulas.
equivalent expression for NOT (a AND b) using OR. Fill
in the blanks so the two expressions evaluate the same,
whether a and b are TRUE or FALSE:
NOT (a AND b) is the same as OR .
Problems with a Point: March 12, 2002 c EDC 2001
Web search operations: Answers 1
Answers
1. (a) not a hit
(b) hit
(c) hit
(d) not a hit
2. (a) TRUE
(b) FALSE
(c) TRUE
(d) FALSE
3. (a) TRUE Teachers Note: Some
students may have trouble with
the idea that TRUE and FALSE
are numbers. Try not to push
the concept; students should be
able to see that if one thing is
true and another thing is false,
you cant say that, together,
theyre true. At best its half-true.
Since were only working with two
possibilitiestrue and falsewe
have to say this expression (true
and false) is false.
Teachers Note: Perhaps as an
extension, you might have
students replace TRUE with the
number 1 and FALSE with the
number 0. (Much computer
software interprets Boolean values
in this way.) Ask if there are
arithmetic operations that
correspond to the Boolean
operations. (AND works like
multiplication. OR almost works
like addition, except for TRUE
OR TRUE, because 1 +1 isnt 1.)
(b) FALSE
(c) FALSE
(d) FALSE
(e) TRUE
(f) TRUE
(g) TRUE
(h) FALSE
4. (a) TRUE
(b) TRUE
(c) FALSE
(d) TRUE
5. No, its not a hit.
6. (a) FALSE
(b) FALSE
(c) TRUE
(d) TRUE
(e) FALSE
7. NOT (a AND b) is the same as NOT a OR NOT b. Teachers Note: As an
additional challenge, students
could prove that this formula can
be extended to any number of
variablesfor example, NOT (a
AND b AND c) is the same as
NOT a OR NOT b OR NOT c.
Problems with a Point: March 12, 2002 c EDC 2001